Ko's Bankrupt Political Credibility and Party List Lacking Highlights：TPP May Fail on Both Ends
United Daily News, November 25, 2023
Talks to realize a political alliance between the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) failed. TPP Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je decided to go his own way and campaign alone until the end, overturning the original consensus of the two political parties. Ko turned his back and denied his promise, ruining his political integrity. Ko often boasts openness and transparency; however, he insisted on backroom talks for the three-party negotiations among the KMT, TPP, and Terry Gou, which was considered by some public opinion to be a slap in the face. At the same time, nominees in the TPP’s legislative election party list lack highlights. Most of the candidates are even parachute candidates who are close to executive director Huang Shan-shan of the Ko campaign, sparking dissatisfaction within the party. The TPP may face a tough situation of losing both the presidential and legislative elections.
November 24th was the deadline for the KMT and TPP to register for the presidential election. On the last day of the showdown, the KMT and TPP finally broke up and registered to run the election separately. Looking back at the KMT and TPP stalemate, Ko proudly insisted on using the polls as criteria because he believe his results were higher than those of Hou You-ih. Ko expressed if he loses within the margin of error, he would be willing to be the running mate of the ticket. With the assistance of former President Ma Ying-jeou, the KMT finally agreed to use the polls as the basis for forming an alliance, but it had to rely on comparing the performances of a hypothetical Hou-Ko ticket versus a Ko-Hou ticket against the Lai-Hsiao ticket of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). It is with this agreement that Ko signed the six-point consensus between two political parties, KMT and TPP.
Surprisingly, after the KMT and TPP party consultations were finalized, Ko’s supporters and staff were in a frenzy of rage, believing that Ko had given in too much and had fallen into the KMT’s trap. The morale of the Ko campaign dropped, and many staff threatened to resign in protest. Ko hurriedly held a TPP meeting to express grievances and regain morale. After many days of intensive discussions, Ko’s staff believed that there was a lot of room for ambiguity in the original consultation conclusions, so they used polls to examine the large gap between the two sides and refused to recognize the results reviewed by polling experts.
According to long-term polling observations, Ko’s supporters are mainly young people. After Ko negotiated and signed a six-point consensus with the KMT, they all expressed their disappointment that Ko bowed to the KMT, and even threatened to request the Ko camp to return their previous donations. Seeing the internal turmoil boiling over, Ko stated at the campaign rally on November 19 that he would fight to the end as a presidential candidate of the TPP to regain the morale of his supporters. However, it was not easy to restore the trust of some supporters in Ko.
KMT Base Returns, Ko’s Poll Numbers Expected to Return to Fall
Ko originally planned to use the KMT-TPP alliance to take advantage of the KMT and strengthen himself and the TPP. However, the KMT and TPP waited until the last moment to break up. Even though Ko stated that he could cooperate with the legislators and other levels except the presidential election, the KMT and its supporters who have been deceived once would not be fooled again. People familiar with the matter said Ko waited too long to decide to break up. If he did not want to cooperate with the KMT, he could have made it clear earlier. Expectations for KMT and TPP “cooperation” only saw constant “procrastination,” and Ko’s decision to overturn the table at the end, which harmed the feelings of KMT voters. Even in the later stage of the election campaign, when it comes to strategic voting in the case scenario that Hou is unlikely to win over Lai, KMT supporters would still be unwilling to vote for Ko since they deem him as having no political integrity. Now that the “three-way race” between the KMT, DPP, and TPP has formed in the presidential election, Ko’s polling is expected to fall rapidly and be knocked back to its original state. This is because KMT supporters are empathetic of Hou for he was seemingly humiliated during the consultation period. Now that Hou has finally chosen Jaw Shaw-kong, media personality and chairman of the Broadcasting Corporation of China, as his running mate and former Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu ranks first in the KMT’s legislative election party list, KMT supporters have returned. Hou is expected to maintain the KMT’s basic base, and it will become difficult for Ko to take advantage of the KMT.
TPP Party List Lacks Highlights, Features Too Many Parachute Nominees
Ko exposed his tactics to the KMT and found it difficult to leverage. Moreover, the TPP party list announced recently has caused a commotion within the party because there were too many parachute candidates on the list. TPP members believed that if they just played it safe while lacking any highlights or selected candidates just to satisfy internal party members, this will not attract voters. TPP supporters are mostly rational voters and may switch their support at any time.
Huang has been questioned about the nominees in the TPP party list as too many nominees are Huang’s allies, and most of them are overly low-profile. They just want to take advantage of Ko’s popularity in exchange for the opportunity to become a legislator-at-large. It is challenging to cultivate talents for the TPP. These candidates may just leave the party after serving their terms as legislators.
TPP insiders complained privately that when Huang ran for mayor of Taipei City, she did not register as a TPP member. She immediately joined the TPP after losing the mayoral election to secure a seat in the TPP’s party list. Former Legislator Huang Kuo-chang also recently parachuted into the TPP. The two have been criticized for switching affiliations after their respective political parties—the People First Party (PFP) and New Power Party (NPP) collapsed. If the two were strong candidates, they would not have left their previous parties and joined the TPP.
TPP officials said that after the TPP party list was made public, some grassroots party members really felt that they could not cast their ballots for them. There were too few candidates who made substantial contributions to the party. Eventually, the number of votes that Ko receives may be higher than TPP’s party ballots. It is not easy for the TPP to maintain its current five seats of legislator-at-large, not to mention to achieve the goal of obtaining at least eight seats. TPP’s internal concerns are that it may fail in both the presidential and legislative elections.